"The Iraqi People"

I swear I'm sick of that phrase being hurled about by apologists for Bush's sad waste of a war. War proponents go on and on about "the Iraqi people" and what they want. More often than not, they are held up as a contrast to the "insurgents" and "terrorists." Are the terrorists and insurgents all non-Iraqis? I doubt it and most of the reports I've seen suggest that there are many native Iraqis who are in on the insurgency as well. Logically this seems likely since the disbanding of the army and high unemployment rates probably mean that there are a lot of angry young men with nothing to do, fertile ground for a home-grown insurgency.

Another ploy is for Bush or whoever to tell us what these Iraqi people want. How do they know? They say there are problems with polling in North America, I can't imagine how bad it is in Iraq. First of all there is the intimidation factor. We don't even need to blame this on the legacy of Saddam's (US-aided) brutality either. Nope, Abu Ghraib probably has done more than enough to make Iraqis plenty intimidated by the Americans. I don't think that the Iraqis perceived it as "fratboy hijinks" as some consverative commentators have labelled the torture there. On top of that, who even has a working phone? I mean if you poll by phone, Iraq's severely damaged infrastructure probably means that pollsters can't reach large swaths of the country. So in reality, I don't think anyone has any idea what the Iraqi people want (except for those Iraqi people who are insurgents, we have a pretty good idea what they want). So the next time some war supporter tells you that the Iraqi people want this or that, perhaps rolling your eyes is the best response.